Comments

1. It isn't a case of RPS and certain classss having trouble with reflect. It's that literally every single momentum class (yes, including Bard) has absolutely no chance against a magi that preps while using reflect and bloodboil, to which there are no limitations for a Magi to use because of cast ring, already long vibe decay times and a prep-based offence. They already have a passive heal every 10s!

2. Reflections are great against monks. They prevent the kick in a combo, always, and their fast eq recovery means you can quickly HOLD BREATH after reflecting to nullify kai choke AND their combo. You can then do something like turtle until a mount comes back from banish or pre-apply before you hit, and the plenty of other options available.

As an addendum, Bards do have the oppurtunity to damage via minuet/blackout, but that's quite a rare luxury and a difficult one to take advantage of with little to no momentum going imto breaks. All other viable damage routes from other momentum classes are destroyes by reflect and shield.

Sentinel: Hands down obliterates magi in every way shape and form. I don't believe I need to go over in detail why, since it's pretty much universally agreed upon that Sent shits on Magi.

Jester: Another class whose extreme mobility makes it almost impossible for a magi to prevent fashions/prep/whatever other methods they want to use. A very solid choice against a Magi regardless if reflections are used, because fashions don't care about reflections.

Bard: Right now, a great bard shits on Magi. @Xinna has proven this time and again and @Dalran has also wrecked as a competent bard. Yes, it has a lot to do with minuet, however there's really very little that reflections will do to delay the inevitable, if the bard knows what they're doing.

Monk: Once again you're arguing about Tekura. I notice that a lot of mid-tier monks rely way too heavily on it instead of getting creative with telepathy, which, once that Magi drops retard, will obliterate. Hinder whatever leg prep you want, any good monk (@Jhui, @Kross, @Xer) will always find a way around reflections because monk has such extreme versatility and a vast array of options at their disposal. The extreme affliction pressure of Telepathy, along with creative use of Kaido makes it very difficult for a Magi to get their bearings. Let's not even talk about a monk going in pre-kai'd (which does rarely happen 1v1, but it happens).

Priest: Reflections do absolutely nothing against priest, unless they want to whore smite, which no decent priest will do 1v1. Hidden afflictions, extreme mana pressure and great hindering make priest an incredibly difficult class for a mana-heavy class like Magi to fight (and holy hell is it scary in retard).

Runies: Runewardens have many avenues to hinder a Magi, and reflections only halve the impact of a DSL, which is admittedly helpful... but with Thurisaz stacks, lunge and engage, Runies are the best contenders for simply obliterating any magi (an extremely squishy class, since very few spec con due to maxing out int) that isn't extremely careful (and that takes more than reflections) or isn't artied out the ass. Isaz on the ground is also an immensely clever way to screw up Magi in retardation, as the constant prone/off balance will severely disrupt a Magi's momentum and give Runewardens a huge edge in the fight.

Apostate: Apostates laugh at reflections. Evileye ignores them completely as well as Nightmare and -maybe- daeggar hunt (I haven't checked).

So I just listed 7 classes that aren't too horribly affected by Magi/Sylvan reflections. It's late and my head hurts from all the misinformation spread around this thread of late, so I'm not going to sit and think about other classes right now... but I hope this gives you an idea of how some people have exacerbated the "problem" of reflections. It's extremely strong against certain classes like BM and Serpent... but just because they can shut down two or three classes doesn't make the skill ridiculous. Lots of classes have methods of shutting down other classes, and the fact is that people are crying bloody murder because they are not putting very much thought or creativity into getting around a skill. Food for thought.

Calling reflections "useless" is a bit too far too. I've turtled up with reflections against runewardens who went for straight damage and slow-prepped them that way, thurisaz or no.

Spamming reflections is going to be really annoying against many classes. As someone said, if the monk starts choking, your reflection won't help you, but it won't vanish either and you'll be holding your breath. Some classes have difficulty with it, others have a lot of passive attacks (bees, sentinel ents, hailstorm, etc...) that can eat up reflections and keep up the pressure. When you add in rebounding or a random shield in the mix, it can get silly.

If they changed reflections, I wouldn't mind too much. In many fights I don't use them very often, only when the opponent's damage output is so high that I have to turtle up or die in ten seconds.

You just listed like 5 prep-based/limb damage classes. Apostate sure, reflections aren't too much of a problem. One momentum based class. So, shall we move onto NoP and Bloodboil and see how that affects them?

You just listed like 5 prep-based/limb damage classes. Apostate sure, reflections aren't too much of a problem. One momentum based class. So, shall we move onto NoP and Bloodboil and see how that affects them?

Sent does not destroy competent Magi, either.

Shrug. I see nothing wrong with Magi having an edge over momentum classes. It's your opinion that it's wrong... and regardless of your thoughts, Achaea IS one big RPS in terms of some class layouts. That's just the way it is. You'd be crying to high heavens and back if you couldn't force-Bedevil a priest, for instance... but otherwise, Priest counters momentum classes, as do some fitness classes as well.

I've had several serpents able to lock me, regardless of use of bloodboil and NoP because there's ways around it that an intelligent serpent can do, and do rather effectively. Talk to @Cresil about good locking strats. Occies also have a great set of tools for overwhelming Magi in or out of Retardation.

Sents shit on Magi, unless the Sentinel lets the Magi trap them in retard (which should never happen with reflex-tumble/evade/1 billion ents) and stick monkshood on them. A good Sentinel will always beat a competent Magi 1v1 simply because the Sentinel always gets to choose where to fight the Magi and on what terms.

This imaginary world where sents have evade and monks have "extreme affliction pressure" sounds really interesting, @Aegoth.

Meanwhile, literally nothing you described about those seven classes has nothing to do with magi. You just listed a bunch of attributes that you find challenging about other classes. Magi has just as much (if not more) methods of mitigating both damage and afflictions than almost every other class in the game. If you can't keep up with afflictions -or- burst damage as a magi, then you're doing something seriously wrong.

Since you seem 100% dedicated to being snotty and rude, I'm not going to bother going into detail (otherwise, I would), but magi has ways of countering literally every offense in the game.

I will put forth that despite you repeatedly asserting that I know nothing about monk, I certainly know far more than you, and held my own against all of the top-tier fighters in the game 1v1 perfectly well. I also use Telepathy in great depth, to the point that I spent well over half of my time in Int/Eq build (bought level 2 gem and level 1 grimoire specifically to do this). Remember that time you tried catching me in a ret trap, and you die to me doing literally nothing but mind crush? Yeah, that was Int monk. (not claiming that was a strategic masterpiece, but I play the player).

"Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present. And by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future."

Honestly if you're getting locked in 1v1 combat as a magi, you are terrible. I am sorry to break etiquette on this, but it's just a fact as far as I am concerned.

Magi has literally the best passive anti-lock curing ability in the game, an active balance disrupter vibe (slows affliction rate), reflections (STOPS afflictions), rebounding/shield, the ability to cure two random afflictions at any time (with your opponent having absolutely no clue what you cured), and an easy escape skill that trumps most hindrance (geyser).

Not to mention that with a torc, you can essentially drop ret and start spamming mind paralyze/stupidity at almost any time, ever and completely negate most affliction classes' preparation. If they stay in the room, they're mind fucked from torc + full vibes, if they leave the room, you drop ret and cure. Either way, you win.

It's a close call with sylvan, but IMO if you are getting locked (and staying locked) as a magi, you honestly aren't at the point where you should be creating magi classlead threads on a weekly basis.

My guess is that you have terrible affliction priorities, and lack the experience to know when to use active curing/hindrance/escape skills to avoid locks. Nothing wrong with this, but please don't preach at me/us about combat skill since this is the case.

"Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present. And by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future."

This imaginary world where sents have evade and monks have "extreme affliction pressure" sounds really interesting, @Aegoth.

Meanwhile, literally nothing you described about those seven classes has nothing to do with magi. You just listed a bunch of attributes that you find challenging about other classes. Magi has just as much (if not more) methods of mitigating both damage and afflictions than almost every other class in the game. If you can't keep up with afflictions -or- burst damage as a magi, then you're doing something seriously wrong.

Since you seem 100% dedicated to being snotty and rude, I'm not going to bother going into detail (otherwise, I would), but magi has ways of countering literally every offense in the game.

I will put forth that despite you repeatedly asserting that I know nothing about monk, I certainly know far more than you, and held my own against all of the top-tier fighters in the game 1v1 perfectly well. I also use Telepathy in great depth, to the point that I spent well over half of my time in Int/Eq build (bought level 2 gem and level 1 grimoire specifically to do this). Remember that time you tried catching me in a ret trap, and you die to me doing literally nothing but mind crush? Yeah, that was Int monk. (not claiming that was a strategic masterpiece, but I play the player).

I'll bite on the Sents with evade thing. I had always assumed they did because almost every fight with a sentinel I had, they could move without proccing alertness. Must have been lemming. As for the monks and extreme affliction pressure thing, I'll chalk that up to your inability to play monk very well. The top-tier monks I've fought always tripped me up with affliction pressure. Aside from very few one-offs where you tried something cute, and I then adapted to it right after, you've never beaten me in a straight up 1v1 as monk. Let's not forget that you're the guy who is always caught lying about your combat prowess (you v. @Xinna comes to mind).

The things I described in those classes are things that, if you put a modicum of thought into, can be used to trip up Magi to give you some space to think of other methods to kill. I had a chat with @Aelios, and he stated that he doesn't find Magi reflections to be a bother, since they only block a portion of his DSL, and he still has many methods to overcome Magi turtling.

Magi are -extremely- susceptible to burst damage if you don't have con-spec or artefacts. That's just a fact. At lvl 98, without wearing my arties, I have 3926hp. Go ahead and tell me that you can't damage burst me with some creative strategies to overcome reflections. Yes, Magi have a lot of ways to turtle, but there are many classes that have methods of overcoming the turtling, monk being the most prevalent and powerful among them.

As well, my getting locked by some serpents does not make me terrible, it makes those serpents really really good, because I do everything I can to mitigate their output, and if I trip up, they got me. NoP always cures voyria first, so a smart serpent will voyria stack once they get a couple afflictions on. Bloodboil is stopped by paralysis and disruption. Stick paralysis, disruption and voyria and you completely negate a Magi's curing, hence a lock. Is it difficult to achieve that if I do turtle up? Of course... but at the same time, I'm not doing anything to them at all while I'm whoring those reflections, so it's pretty much a tradeoff. There are things that I can improve on, and yes I'll beat most serpents because I know how to... but those very few who actually know their class will find ways to trip me up.

If you pre-flood, yes. Flooding doesn't erase ground runes already enscribed. Also, you can just barge a Magi out of their room

Right, but thurisaz cant be pre-enscribed and hugalaz doesn't last long. So the necessary hugalaz + thurisaz which is essential to kill anyone with 5k+ health is an issue if you can't get them to leave a flooded room.

Why would you let yourself get barged?Barge isn't stopped by anything a Magi has access to but icewalls, afaik. Sometimes icewalls are detrimental to what I want (ie. being able to move freely to kill adjacent monoliths in a sigil war). Thusly, it's not too difficult for a barger to set up a situation where I need to make myself barge-able if I don't want my retardation setup to be negated by tumbling.

Why would you not wear arties?This was more a generic statement. I would always wear arties in a fight, but not every Magi has artefacts.

Why would you let a knight get his prep faster than you if you are prepping?Some things depend on many variables. For instance: Aelios has a 1.7s DSL. His hindering, which is applied during prep, is quite good, and it's entirely possible for his prep to finish before mine.

Why would you not prioritize paralysis and use bloodboil when you have 3 afflictions or more?Yes I can spam bloodboil all day, but where does that ultimately get me? 3 afflictions is not hard to achieve as a serpent, and if I'm constantly bloodboiling for 3 seconds a pop every time he dstabs me twice at 1.6s a pop, I might not be getting hindered very much, but I'm not going anywhere with my offense.

Why is your offense stopped when you have a slow prep?No, we are all cats swimming towards the sun.

Barge is stopped by being mounted. By not having a mount, or an arti pet you have already limited yourself.

Balancing around people not wearing artefacts is bad, as artefacts are not an inaccessible feature of the game.

Knights and serpents have incredibly easy offenses to hinder and escape. Rebounding, Shield, Flying, using the mount that you should have to leap past hindering. Parrying well can force a knight to take up to 4-5 minutes to prep you since they would have to continuously break limbs to setup the second leg if you parry the previously broken leg and shield on arm breaks. You should easily be able to staffstrike 3 times per limb in the mean time.

Spamming bloodboil keeps you alive while the serpent is maintaining his offense up until rebounding comes up. Also serpents require hypnosis to consolidate any locks and if you know they haven't hypnotised you, for example, after they have snapped and failed to lock you due to bloodboil, you can offensive for a few rounds before playing defensive again.

It doesn't matter if you aren't killing them quickly, you aren't dead. Some classes don't even get this luxury.

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One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important

I hate writing in the forums, I truly do. But I feel I need to write something on this.

I wish to point out, every class has those that they are strong against, and weak against. Counters to what they can do, the idea being to balance everyone yet not to the point of being regulated to 1 damage per hit for everyone because it has to be fair and coddling. Serpents, Knights, and Monks have been mentioned here as weak against Magi. All fair examples, though ignoring how easily certain classes can shut us down as we're weak against them...but let's focus on those.

Now the main concern so far relates to Limb Prep and Reflections. I do trust all involved are Highlighting via triggers and know to use that to alert them to when their combos aren't going through....should really only throw you off in the event A) you're using an automated limb counter system, you're not using the opportunity of them focused on Reflection spamming (since if they're doing it enough to mess with your prep, you can bet that's what'll be their focus for the next several seconds at the least) to use other abilities to aim for disabling instead. Of course, Stone and Diamondskin tend to soak up a lot of the damage, but I assume you're not aiming to just damage out the Magi/Sylvan in question, so shouldn't be as much a concern. Leaving just the Reflections bit as the problem you all seem focused on. For that, use a different skill than your apparent usual. For Monks, Telepathy. Really cannot stress how effective Monks are with that against a Magi, enough so that for all that Retardation is pushed so heavily as the 'only' thing any combatant Magi should use...really cannot against a monk that knows the timing of Aeon to use it against us. Blackout, most likely twice for Tree, strip a few defenses hoping for Skins, else aim for a few key afflictions. Stupidity is nice to stick in Blackout, then aim for Pacify/Disrupt....don't even bother with Crush if you're in their vibes since Harmony+sips negates the usefulness of that unless you can throw them out of the room first, Choke a couple times, assume they'll hold their breath and move to other things. I'll leave the exact setup to you Monks that really ought to know what'd work best for your particular 'style'...but Telepathy will easily counter the issues faced when you cannot go for your beloved Backbreaker setup. Just because you face a class that stops your main method of killing, doesn't mean you're ineffective against them.

Knights, depends on the form of them. Against that other class skill will make all the difference. Runelorists can always aim for Hunger damage if the Magi is just reflect spamming their limb dsl's, etc. And either way you go or what particular knight class you are, shriveling limbs and stacking venoms for your DSLs with whatever passives you might have in the case of Paladins (plus your Falcon, don't forget that annoying thing), will make up for not being able to stick a few limb prep strikes through. High speed still counters even Reflection spamming even if that's ALL the Magi is wasting their time doing, and given said Magi needs to do something besides that if they're gonna take you down...you'll get your opening eventually if you're patient.

Serpents. Well. Necklace of Purity is quite effective, if a much slower tic than say Panacea, and only cures venom based afflictions (how I always wished it'd cure Aeon....c'est la vie), and let's not forget Bloodboil which has been mentioned. Problem I'm seeing in a lot of these arguments is simply that people want an easier time killing without bother to think of strategies...go straight for their particular Class's kill build, and not worry about ancillary methods that exist and are open to them. Backbreaker, vivisect, affliction piling till they choke on their own blood, whatever. Serpents, your biggest strength is mobility. Classes you are weak against are those with Hamstring in particular since for all that you'll have a hard time killing a Magi or Priest...we/they cannot pin you down almost at all barring careful planning and Staffstrike preps, etc. Seal in some good Hypnosis (Disrupt is good as before, since Magi are all EQ based, then you got Recklessness, Stupidity etc, depends on what your next steps plan is basing the Dstab on using) Evade past Icewalls/frozen ground, snipe if you'd like (if Magi lays Retardation anyway, pointless without since...again Reflections), HIDE, come back in via Evade to not kick off Alarm vibe, backstab for that stun, double delph, bind, Garrote if the person is low level/health else aim for stacking afflictions with Dstab. Can also have a Suggestion have them dampen Retardation, drop a flamed cube and ruin all their precious vibes if you want to be mean. Yes, Necklace of Purity will prevent you locking the person, at least for very long. And if they get freed/you don't bother shriveling arms and legs, they can always Bloodboil against you...that Hypnosis pre-setup will make it quite a bit harder for them to manage anything in stopping you before you've had the chance to most likely damage them out with Camus, Garrote (while still prone from the binding if you managed to stick it and they didn't have metawake up), etc. All else fails, leave, repeat. What's the Magi gonna do with you afflicting them near constantly, slowing their active offense and defense methods, etc? Staffstrike combos on you are well and good, but still need to keep you still long enough to set it up. Leave, Skullcap, snipe, rebounding, re-enter, let em hit themselves, leave, hide, backstab, repeat. Have fun with it....should never be fighting standing in any one location anyway.

All of these are...admittedly...noobish methods and strategies. Certainly effective against your typical Magi opponent however, given the lack of many combatants historically. Basing everything around one or two artied out, and well skilled targets won't really give you much of a backdrop for just what you're dealing with though. The idea is to come up with your own particular style and strategy...yes with the aim to go for your main method of killing (a la Backbreaker)...but with alternative methods piled up to distract and even get through as well. Combat should be fluid and mobile, which is WHY skills like Reflections, Bloodboil, and passive heals like Necklace of Purity were even in place. We all love the idea of just wading into a room and demolishing everything like it's nothing...swells the ego quite easily I'm sure...but combat was never meant to be like that. Particularly one on one...a lot of fluidity is present, and should allow for more than just quick kills to be the only measure of whether a class is OP when attempted to be used on them, or not.

And yes...I know. I shouldn't talk since I have always hated combat since it's often just hurting people without much in the way of RP to back it up, and people just want easy kills to boast about or find the whole thing funny. But I believe I know enough to be able to have some credibility when I state you DO have other means of getting your kills against even the oh-so-way-too-powerful Magi. And all that I mentioned...a Magi drops Retard on you unprepped, they're just asking to die. So you shouldn't feel too bad if you are finding them difficult to take down outside of Retardation....just means they know better than to fight you like they should fight everyone And yes...if you're fighting someone that knows what they're doing...you're gonna have a bad time regardless. Damaging them out, piling afflictions, everything is going to be difficult. But that really just means it doesn't matter WHAT class they are, you'll have the same issues. If your concern is taking out someone at that caliber of skill/reflexive programming (good example, imagine fighting Poergh and trying to lock her)....well the class really is irrelevant and you should focus on disabling as much as you can and slowly whittle them down. Getting impatient against someone that can cure effectively and just want them dead via an instant will only yield frustration more often than not...so calling for skills to get nerfed as they are inconvenient really doesn't help anyone. And believe me, Magi isn't so easy for your typical novice to pick up and be able to fight well enough for what you lot are even complaining about to be a concern.

Also, apologies for the length, wanted it out all at once to not have to make a series of miniposts. And I'm sure there's a lot of arguments, questions, raging etc at what I've said.....so let's hear it

Magi combat is pretty slow-paced(no pun intended), reliant on a few aliases, chance and passive vibes atm. It would be interesting to see the class reworked into something faster and more skill-based relative to "attach mushroom to monolith|cube/touch brazier/jab prefarar with pre-envenomed dagger/torc stuff when rebounding is up" etc.

Hence why I said Lothiac. It was a bad example I suppose, but I've always seen holocaust a bit like Kaido Deliverance. It's about anticipation, timing, psychology, etc. When used intelligently, it's incredibly powerful.

Yeah I'm pretty sure even Lothiac's testicles are artefacts, but good example. ^_^

Magi combat was a bit easier when we could rely on key illusions. Sadly...with the move away from illusions being viable...meh. Much harder now to manage things without that luck and timing of passive vibes proccing when you need them to. Impossible to solo stick a transfix without Retardation for instance. What with blind being instant and all...such as it is though.

Nice post Ashed, sums things up nicely.As a sidenote personally I have always felt that if magi was really as good as some claim, more combatants would be magi, because lets face it, plenty of people out there constantly looking for the easiest way to kill people.

As I've said in the past, Magi (along with monk) are by far the easiest classes in the game for beginners/midbies, against other beginners/midbies.

I'm fairly confident that with nothing other than Elementalism, Crystallism, Survival, and a Torc, you could easily kill 75% of the playerbase in retardation/vibes, in 1v1 combat. (I'm actually lowering my estimation in an attempt to be more "moderate". If I were to be completely honest, I'd say about 85%)

"Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present. And by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future."